Resident Assistant Recruitment and Hiring

Project

I was responsible for coordinating the recruitment, interviewing and hiring process for a group of 41 Resident Assistant plus a pool of alternate candidates. This project involves the following major steps:

Coordinating with the University Marketing Office to develop an ad campaign advertising the position and information sessions
Conducting information sessions
Collecting and evaluating application paperwork for new and returning candidates
Holding a series of group and individual interviews for candidates
Managing a draft-style hiring event where Residence Directors select staffs for the coming academic year
Generating and distributing new hire paperwork, invitations to join the alternate pool and regrets letters
Planning and hosting a mixer event for new hires
Generating and collecting final payroll paperwork during Fall Resident Assistant Training

Time Frame

I worked on the project from September 2011 through August 2013. After a colleague resigned to pursue another opportunity in January 2014, I was assigned to take her place working on the project. Though some times are busier than others, Resident Assistant Selection is a continuing process that demands attention in different ways throughout the academic year.

Collaboration

During the 2011-2012 academic year, I worked with a more experienced Residence Director under the supervision of an Associate Director of Residence Life for general guidance and oversight. In 2012-2014, I was the lead Residence Director on the project.

Key Accomplishments

Online Application Process

After my first year working on this project, I was able to look at it strategically and recommend changes. During the 2011-2012 process, we used a paper application form. Candidates filled out the form, and then Residence Directors had to take their information and input it into the Excel Spreadsheet we used to track candidates. This was a time-consuming process that required many hours of work in addition to the standard duties of the Residence Directors. During the summer of 2012, I explored a number of possibilities to alleviate this problem and settled upon an online application using Collegiate Link, a program purchased by the university's Student Life Office that is accessible to professionals in other offices. Collegiate Link was a better choice for us than Survey Monkey or a Google Form.

The chief reason I chose Collegiate Link is that its Forms function allows us to make the appropriate application available to only the appropriate group of people. We were able to create an online "Returner Application" that only current RAs could see, and we were able to create an application for new candidates that was only visible to those who had signed into an information session (candidates must attend an information session to apply). This eliminated a problem we had experienced in previous years where students would provide photocopies of the application form to friends who had not come to the session. Collegiate Link then exported the candidates' data into a spreadsheet that we could then format to reflect the information we needed, which was a huge time and labor saving benefit for the Residence Directors.Once hired, RAs are expected to complete a series of forms that help us learn a bit more about them. We like to get an idea of who has dietary restrictions, what t-shirt sizes to order, and we gather some general information in order to match new RAs with mentors. By moving this piece of the hiring paperwork from a paper document to a Google Form, I avoided additional time spent entering data from paper into a spreadsheet.

Comprehensive How-To Guide

After implementing such a large scale project for the first time, I felt I would be most comfortable having a guide to help me as I acted as team lead during the coming year. As a result, I developed an extensive how-to guide detailing all aspects of the project including timelines, necessary materials for events and recommendations for future improvements I was not able to implement. I treated the document as a living document during my second year working on the project and made amendments as I went. The final document is a 20 page long guide that incorporates the Styles feature of Microsoft Word to make it easily navigable so readers can find what they need quickly. A sample screenshot from the document is pictured here.

Conditional Returner Process

St. Edward's University's tag line is "Take On Your World." We are all about making sure our students use their education as a catalyst to deepen their interactions with the world around them. The university works hard to bring international students to Austin and promotes study abroad. Prior to the time I joined the staff, we had a Resident Assistant express a desire to take a semester off to study abroad. As a result of this, during my first year, I worked to codify this process so that future RAs would have the option to incorporate an international experience into their SEU experience. The result was a separate application process that set clear guidelines for RAs hoping to take some time off. Current RAs can now plan to study abroad during the fall term and apply to be placed on the alternate list during the spring. This makes them eligible for hire in the event of a mid-year vacancy. During my tenure with the department, we have had three RAs reapply using this method and two were placed in vacancies for Spring 2014.

Google Sites

Report abuse